Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series)

by J. Barton Mitchell

  “Just standing around isn’t gonna help.” Ravan ran by, yanking him along with her, ducking around the side of an old water tank.

  “Maybe you didn’t notice the hook in my leg,” Holt replied sourly, the pain searing as he ran. Ahead of them was the storage container and its flashing light.

  “And on the very first cable shot too,” Ravan replied sarcastically.

  “That’s the hardest one!”

  The cables blew into the air again, raining their hooks down all over the field. Holt and Ravan slammed against the side of an old taxi, barely avoiding the sharp barbs. In the distance, Masyn and Castor ran for a green flashing light above one of the pits.

  The combination lock had finally revealed itself, and as he watched, Masyn used the red staff to pole-vault over the pit, arcing through the air and landing on the other side. As she did, she dropped the staff behind her, resting it across the length of the pit. Castor balanced and walked across the thin shaft, then used it to kneel down and shove the green axe into a receptacle somewhere inside.

  Seconds later, another burst of sound filled the arena, and a corner of the huge screen colored green.

  Castor and Maysn had done it. They both leapt clear of the pit and dodged around new ones, leaping over strands of cable, headed toward the bus in the distance with its flashing red light that held the keyhole for Masyn’s staff.

  For them the hard part was done. They would make it, which, of course, meant it was up to Holt and Ravan now. The screen above showed 3 … they were running out of time.

  They dashed out from the taxi … and stumbled as a new pit spun to life in front of them. More cables exploded into the air, landing around them.

  Holt leapt over them, trying to focus on everything going on around him at once, which wasn’t easy. Ravan dashed in the opposite direction, doing the same. They met on the other side and ran for the old storage container just ahead.

  “You ever seen anyone beat Tarantula?” Holt asked.

  “Nope,” Ravan replied, barely avoiding another hook as it slid past.

  “So you have no idea what’s up with this keyhole?”

  “Nope.”

  Wonderful, Holt thought. The Nonagon was a bad place to be a trailblazer.

  They slammed into the container, scanned it, looking for the receptacle for the bolt cutters, but there was nothing. Ravan jumped and grabbed the top edge, pulled herself up to see the top, then dropped back down.

  “Nothing,” she said, confused.

  Then the answer occurred to Holt. He yanked open the thing’s heavy steel doors. Inside, at the very back, sat the receptacle, a long orange metallic box, with wires running out the ends and disappearing in a hole in the floor.

  Far away, Masyn used the staff to spring herself into the air and land on top of the upended bus with the red light. Seconds later, the blaring noise. A corner on the screen shifted to red. The number there was now 1.

  “Move it!” Ravan shoved him forward, and they scrambled into the container. Holt would have smiled if his leg wasn’t killing him. They were going to beat Tarantula, they were actually going to—

  The metallic floor underneath them began to vibrate. A rumbling sound grew outside. Holt and Ravan looked at each other.

  Gravity pulled them back as the entire container suddenly upended and a new pit formed directly under it. Unlike the tow truck earlier, the storage container wasn’t attached to anything, which meant it was being sucked down inside.

  Holt heard the roar of the crowd intensify. Through the container door, he saw the dirt draining into the grinding gears at the bottom of the pit. Sparks flew as the metal box hit those teeth. Scraps of metal shot everywhere as the container was ripped apart and sucked down.

  Holt and Ravan grabbed opposite walls, trying to hold on as everything kept tilting. It was about to be too steep, they would slide down the slick floor toward the gears below.

  “Toss it here!” Ravan shouted, barely holding on.

  He saw what she intended, and threw her the bolt cutters. She fumbled them, but held on. With the last of his strength and with both hands free, Holt grabbed the side of the container and propelled himself toward the receptacle at the end.

  He slammed into the back wall, grabbed onto the box and the wires, holding on as the container kept tilting and the teeth ripped everything to pieces below them.

  “Ravan!” he yelled, and she threw him the cutters. He caught them, yanked open the box, slammed them inside, and shut it closed.

  Ravan groaned and fell backward, barely catching herself. Holt felt himself going too. The gears continued to grind.

  Outside the blaring tone of sound came again. The gears whined as they slowly died, shutting off. What was left of the fractured container shuddered as the pit closed and it was lifted back level with the arena floor.

  Then everything was quiet, and Holt and Ravan planted themselves against the metal wall, exhausted. The crowd outside howled in fury, but right then, Holt didn’t care.

  Ravan looked at him, spent. “Well, that’s one.”

  * * *

  AVRIL WATCHED THE FOUR tiny figures in the arena slowly make their way back to the starting area as what remained of the Tarantula’s pits flattened out and disappeared, resetting.

  The crowd was electrified, on its feet, and no section was more rowdy than the one under the giant Tarantula banner. Not only had their configuration not managed to kill a single competitor, it had been beaten, which meant they had just lost profit instead of gaining it.

  The windows of the giant screen on the Turret suddenly began to spin. The crowd went silent. Haphazardly, the images froze in place, making another giant mosaic.

  It took a moment for Avril to recognize it. It looked almost like a snake, but wider and more oblong, with a strange, triangular face. Electric bolts shot out from its sides, the clues that finally let her decipher it.

  It was an Eel.

  A section on the far right side cheered as their banner, with its identical image, rose up above the others. Nonagon workers rushed toward the Turret to reconfigure it, switching and modifying its giant pieces.

  “Two minutes,” the staticky, amplified voice announced. The giant timer began to tick once more.

  Avril was full of conflicted emotions. Two of the figures below she was supposed to hate. One for bringing her here, one for killing someone she loved, but the lines that defined those feelings were becoming blurred. The other two she’d fought beside and trained with, commanded even. Avril was bonded to Masyn and Castor, and yet she had betrayed them in her own ways. All of it made watching the Nonagon surreal. She could neither entirely cheer the arena, nor root for its competitors.

  There was envy too. She couldn’t deny the allure, how much honor there was to be earned fighting to survive. It was the kind of challenge Gideon had instilled a lust for in all his children, but this had been dreamed up and created by someone much different.

  Tiberius’s eyes were locked on the four figures below. His expression, as usual, betrayed no emotion, but the intensity of his stare was apparent. Next to him, his inner circle, the Consul and Overseer star ranks debated what they had just seen, and most seemed worried.

  “My point is, no one’s ever beaten Tarantula,” a short, stocky kid with a stubbly goatee named Monroe stated. He was Tiberius’s Economics minister, an Overseer, and one of the few with the guts to openly disagree with her father. It made him valuable to him, but it also, certainly, put him at risk. “Seems pretty damn clear it was a mistake letting in White Helix, or at least, with all their limbs still working.”

  “That’s against the rules,” a lanky girl named Petra replied. She was Tiberius’s Spymaster, and unlike Monroe, Avril had never seen Petra disagree with anything her father said or did. It made her equally valuable … and equally at risk. “Tiberius wrote them himself, are you saying he made a mistake?”

  Monroe gave Petra an annoyed look. Such obvious political maneuverings became more common the
higher up the command structure you went. “I’m just saying I would have broken some fingers or punctured a lung, that’s all. Handicapping them’s fair, brings them down to the level of the usual contestants.”

  “One of them isn’t using his left arm,” an icy voice observed. It was Marek, the only current Consul in the Menagerie, and Tiberius’s most trusted advisor. There were two Consul positions, and it was widely believed that the second would go to Avril. After all, Archer had held it before. Marek, unlike Archer, had risen to the rank all on his own, without any nepotism at all, and it was a testament to his shrewdness. He was as ruthless as Tiberius, and most likely very displeased at Avril’s return. If she hadn’t come back, Marek would have been the clear heir apparent. Even now, he studied Avril as he spoke. “These Helix seem able to compensate for weakness with new strengths. I’m not surprised, given how formidable … our Avril is.”

  The conversation disintegrated into argument, but her father just stared down at the figures at the Dais, readying for the next round. Quade was at the opposite end of the box, studying Avril with his simple, curious look. Would she betray him or wouldn’t she? The truth was, she still didn’t know which way she would play that card.

  “Stop the bickering.” The arguments ceased at Tiberius’s voice, quiet and calm, yet somehow able to overpower the others. “Even if they win … they lose. There’s no reason for concern.”

  The comment was cryptic, but the inner circle seemed to accept it. Something about the statement bothered her. She looked at Quade questioningly, and he looked back, clearly deciding how much to trust her. In the end, he casually glanced up to the very top of the Nonagon, behind their box.

  There, where the seats of the stands gave way to the support beams that held the structure together, she saw movement. Two figures among the shadows, and a flash, the bright, hot sun reflecting off glass.

  Avril understood. The reflection came off a rifle scope. The figures were snipers.

  Tiberius had no intention of letting Holt’s team win. Even if they did manage to disarm all the configurations … they would still lose. Just as he’d said.

  “One minute,” the voice announced, echoing sharply back and forth amid the stands, and the crowd wailed its approval.

  33. EEL

  RAVAN LISTENED to the one-minute warning and the cheers of the crowd with slowly building anger. She turned in a circle, glaring at the individual stands, and wondered what the conversation was like in Tiberius’s box right about now.

  “I’m going to shut you up!” she yelled back at the crowd. “Every one of you!”

  She felt full of strength now, confident. Before she had been pessimistic at best about their prospects, but the victory over Tarantula had changed that. Now she felt something very different, she felt hope. Dim, certainly, but it was there. She remembered Holt’s words to her in the cell, knew, finally, that he meant them, remembered him pressed against her in that old, familiar way. She had things to live for now, she had reasons for seeing tomorrow.

  “That oughta scare them,” Holt said, and she gave him an amused smile. He’d bandaged his leg using the first-aid supplies in the Dais and was walking better. Masyn and Castor seemed no worse for wear after the first round, they weren’t even breathing hard.

  Everyone held a new item, pulled from the Dais, and it had been Ravan who picked them. The Eel had always been a passion of hers—she loved how the items worked with the configuration, how each had a specific place on the Turret. Of course, that affinity had come as a spectator, not a contestant, but the point was she had a good understanding of strategy.

  Ravan took the red rubber insulated gloves for herself. She was in a better position than Holt to use them, she wasn’t as hurt. She gave him the two yellow hand claws, which were just what they sounded like. They slipped over your wrist with a handle to grab onto, and jutting out from the other side were three sharp, metallic claws. They were for climbing a specific part of the Turret. It was tough work, but easier than going straight up the supports with the gloves.

  Castor was slipping on a green leather harness, with a geared ratchet on the front that hooked into a pulley system on the Turret. It would get him to the top of the giant spinning tower quickly, which was an important part of the strategy. Getting back down, though, was going to be the challenge.

  Masyn held an orange length of chain with a long, sharp grappling hook tied to one end. It was usually used for simple climbing through the Turret supports, but Ravan had other ideas how Masyn could use it.

  The timer under the screen was at the ninety-second mark. It was almost time. There was a groaning as the Turret slowly began to spin again, and she could see the workers running to get clear as long arms of cylindrical metal rose into the air, spinning along with the tower.

  They could all see the lights flashing up and down the Turret, each a different color that corresponded to their item. There was something else too. A dim, bluish, sparkling light that crackled up and down the thing: the arcing of powerful electricity.

  “I see where it gets its name,” Castor said, though his voice sounded fascinated, not frightened. He should be, Ravan thought. That was lethal current, one touch and it was good-bye.

  “I just want you guys to know,” Holt said, staring at the Turret uneasily. “I never wanted to find myself here, and I know you didn’t either, but after the way we beat the last round, there’s no other group I’d rather be in this with than you. Whatever happens … I’m glad you’re here.”

  Ravan looked at him. Holt looked back. He held out his hand and she took it, running her thumb over the rough outline of the unfinished tattoo. “Guess you might as well finish this,” she said.

  He held her gaze … then smiled.

  The blaring tone of sound filled the arena. The windows on the giant screen whirred and slammed into position, creating a huge 9 above them.

  Ravan held Holt’s gaze a moment more … then they all ran toward the Turret as the crowd cheered for them to fail. That wasn’t going to happen, she vowed.

  They ran through the dirt, dodging around cars and old water tanks. Ahead of them, the dirt was replaced by solid metal, the interior floor of the arena.

  “Watch the ground!” Ravan yelled to Masyn and Castor, both several strides ahead in their eagerness. They slowed down as they saw what she meant.

  Parts of the metallic ground flickered in bluish energy. Tiberius had designed the electricity to be visible, even in bright sunlight; it wouldn’t be fair otherwise, he said, though what he really meant was the matches wouldn’t last as long.

  Ravan found a clear patch of ground that wasn’t electrified and headed toward it, followed by Holt. Right now the parts of the Nonagon that were electrified were set, they didn’t change, but that wouldn’t last long.

  She hit the metal, felt herself slide on its slick surface. The thing was like ice. Ravan slowed, felt Holt do the same, but watched Masyn and Castor actually pick up speed. She envied their agility.

  Ahead sat the Turret, three hundred feet tall, spinning powerfully. The arms attached to it varied in length up the entire thing, whizzing through the air as the tower spun.

  A dozen more strides and Ravan reached it, ducking as one of the arms whizzed past and almost took her head off. She risked a glance at the screen; it showed 8. Not bad, but all they’d done so far was the easy part.

  Masyn swung the grappling hook and launched it upward where it clung onto one of the Turret’s support rods, about fifteen feet above. Instantly, she started climbing, fist over fist, pulling herself up.

  Castor reached the pulley system for the harness, a length of cable that went straight up to the top, where the green light that marked his keyhole flashed. When he was hooked in, he yanked the cable down with his good hand, and shot upward.

  “At least they look like they know what they’re doing,” Ravan observed, slipping on the gloves and dodging another arm as it whizzed past.

  “Wonder what that’s like?”
Holt asked back, the fasteners of the two climbing claws already around his wrists. One whole side of the Turret was covered in metallic plating, and Ravan could see the slits that were cut into it in a stair-stepping pattern running up the whole way, slits that would only work with the climbing claws. About halfway up was the flashing yellow light, Holt’s goal.

  “Geronimo,” Holt said … then leapt up and plunged both his claws into matching pairs of slits in the paneling, holding on as the spinning column whipped him away and he began to climb.

  Ravan didn’t have time to wish him luck. Another arm sailed towards her, and she grabbed it. The impact was jarring, but she held on. After that, it was no longer the Turret that spun past her, it was the world outside, racing by in a dizzying blur.

  The crowd cheered louder: the four were on the Turret now, where the Eel could do its worst.

  As she spun, Ravan looked up. She could just make out the red light that marked her keyhole about three-quarters of the way up, mixed in with the central supports that kept the whole thing standing. She was going to have to climb those supports, and she could see the flickering, blue arcs of electricity covering most of them. Only the gloves would protect her, and if she touched it with any other part of her body …

  Ravan slid over the arm toward the center of the column, where it was attached. She studied the interior column, could see the supports, found one that was below her and somewhat isolated from the rest. It wasn’t electrified, it was her best shot.

  Ravan fell … and grabbed onto the support, almost slipped, pulled herself back up. She made it, but she didn’t congratulate herself. That red light was a long way up, through a maze of crisscrossing electrified strands of metal.

  The nearest support was electrified, she could see the flickering energy. She felt a sense of doubt. Would the gloves really work? Could they insulate her from that kind of current?

  Get on with it, she told herself. No hesitation.